Operations Theater catalogues experiments, models, and simulations of future realities from domestic life to the limits of human experience. Although primarily structured by the norms of ‘research and development’ and the spaces of the laboratory or the clinic, these projects can just as productively be understood through the stage and through a framework of ‘rehearsal’ – testing, iterating, and refining future social conditions, ecologies, and technological realities.

Projects in the show include Operation Everest, a barometric pressure experiment that simulated the ascent to the peak of the Himalayas in a lab in Miami, staged by the US Army; newly translated documentary footage of the closed systems experiments of the Institute of Biomedical Problems, the Soviet cosmonautics division tasked with ensuring human survival in space; NASA’s Technology Utilization House, which included space technology spinoffs and a model suburban family; and Kabuki Blues, a comic book documenting the theater exercises and visioning experiments of the Theater of All Possibilities, which contributed to the creation of Biosphere 2. Artefacts related to each experiment are organized within an exhibition environment that resembles a black box theater.

Screenings

We Live in Public

(2009) by Ondi Timoner

(90 min)

Tilikum

(2013) by Jan Peter Hammer

(45 min)

Ondi Timoner’s We Live in Public (2009) documents dot com entrepreneur Josh Harris’s turn of the millennium social media experiment Quiet: We Live in Public.

Jan Peter Hammer’s film essay Tilikum (2013) traces a web of connections between Sea World, behavioral science, and Cold War military research.